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Historical person
1754–1782
John Laurens was a South Carolina officer who served as an aide-de-camp to George Washington and fought in several major campaigns of the American Revolutionary War. He repeatedly argued that enslaved men should be enlisted and emancipated, proposals that challenged slaveholding interests but did not produce the large Black regiment he envisioned.
Forge introduces Laurens at Valley Forge and uses his antislavery proposals to expose the contradiction between the Patriot language of liberty and the continued treatment of Curzon and Isabel as property. His ideas provide a historical counterpoint to the fictional characters’ struggle for immediate freedom.
Series
The Seeds of America trilogy follows Isabel and Curzon, two young people fighting enslavement while Britain’s North American colonies fight for independence. Beginning in New York in 1776, continuing through Saratoga and the Valley Forge encampment, and ending at Yorktown in 1781, the novels connect their search for…
All books in this series
